An upper-sixth English class at Denefield school is deconstructing Wilfred Owen's poem Disabled, line by painful line, their thoughts explicitly on another war in which young men are already dying. "He's lost his colour very far from here, / Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry, / And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race, / And leap of purple spurted from his thigh." The hot race, as the class notes, goes on; Owen's words are worth a week of 24-hour news coverage.

The analysis of the poem is effectively done: the dozen or so class members split into twos and threes and take a stanza each to put through the mincer. They then put their thoughts up for discussion: tentative suggestions for others to build on; an organic reading of the poem, all readings welcome, none dismissed. The teacher, Catherine Cooper, moderates and encourages; she doesn't dictate. I don't recall English being taught like this 20 years ago, when I managed a very good English A-level result while reading little and understanding less.

Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, recently attacked the way English is taught in schools. Stepping down from his post as head of the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia, he attacked the "educational rat wheel" that taught young people to read set texts and pass exams, but did not teach them to love literature. Many of the students applying for the UEA course had, he said, not steeped themselves in the masters of their craft; they had not even read Great Expectations! They had not been educated "in a rounded way"; they were "like Staffordshire figurines - painted only on the front" (a lovely, poet's image).

Strong stuff and, I thought, probably true. Certainly true of my dabblings in Eng Lit when you read (and memorised) what you had to and rarely ventured outside the confines of what the exam board specified. Learning as a means to an end. I still have almost total recall of King Lear and Henry IV part I and know little other Shakespeare; can quote chunks of the Pardoner's Tale while being oblivious to the rest of Chaucer. This figurine is willing to come clean - exam success was founded on the flimsiest of foundations.

I wondered what life on the rat wheel was like now, and my day spent sitting in on GCSE and A-level classes at Denefield school - a 1,200-strong, 11-18 comprehensive near Reading - was designed to find out. Were these 16- to 18-year-olds as circumscribed as I had been at their age? Is the poet laureate right to despair?

Where else could I start but the library, where librarian Anita Kane agrees with Motion that the time for extracurricular reading is being eroded. "Students have so many more pressures on their time now," she says. "Wider reading takes time and with all the exams that they do, they are feeling the strain." The lower-sixth students took their first exam within three months of starting their course, which seems crazy.

But Kane thinks the list of great books posed by Motion as a kind of litmus test of whether a student has read widely - Tristram Shandy, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, Ulysses, Emma, A Handful of Dust, Brighton Rock, Waterland, Midnight's Children - means little. "That's a very adult selection and I don't think 17- and 18-year-olds would necessarily appreciate them," she says. Speaking as someone who is still trying to get to the end of Ulysses (and the middle of Tristram Shandy), I have to agree: this is a list of books that everyone should have attempted by 30, not read by 20.

Kane is loath to label anything a "great work" or a "must read" - labels that are the kiss of death for teenagers. She only started at Denefield in September and was distressed to find that the sixth-form fiction section consisted almost entirely of the stately-looking Everyman Millennium Library - 250 "great works" in funereal binding that she does not find fly off the shelves. Not just great, but excessive, expectations.

I sat in on three A-level classes and virtually no one had read, or in some cases even heard of, the books on Motion's list. One girl had read Great Expectations because she had enjoyed the film. A disappointing poll... or was it? This was the class that had just so thoughtfully dissected the war poem, and which had soundly argued opinions on the English syllabus - too much of the canonical and academic, not enough contemporary material, why not some Stephen King (no thanks, says the teacher). They were interested in words, and the thoughts behind the words, but hadn't had the time (or at this point the inclination) to get to grips with the canon.

In all three A-level classes I joined, girls outnumbered boys by a factor of four to one. The few boys always sat together, and in one class I noticed they sat away from the main body of the girls, almost behind the teacher, who was sitting on the desk. English is perceived as a "girly subject" and it struck me that the essence of the subject lies in being honest about your feelings - your personal response to texts. As Kate in the upper sixth says, it is about "empathy". A lot of those studying English were also doing religion, media studies, sociology: subjects that, as she adds, depend on "understanding other people's points of view".

For me, this explained a great deal about why English was so much more popular among girls. Boys on the whole don't want to articulate their feelings or be forced into the dangerous situation of having to confront texts and respond personally to them. The rules of physics are so much safer.

The collegiate way of working may also appeal more to girls - each individual or small group adding a layer of meaning, sorting out more likely explanations from a large number of possible meanings. "There's no right answer - it's not black and white," Carol Horner tells her lower-sixth class. Adam laughs: "That makes it easier; you can find a quote and write what you like." But of course it doesn't make it easier; it makes it fluid and highly personal. "You really have to think about it," says Kirsty.

Nick Griffin, the school's acting head of English, says that the subjective nature of the subject and its emotional demands can present problems for boys, but he also spots a silver lining. "The fact that there isn't a right answer can throw boys," he says. "But on the other hand some boys find English enjoyable because it allows them to get in touch with their feelings. Books give them a means of expressing their feelings - Romeo and first love, Lord of the Flies and their fight for independence and growing awareness of their sexuality."

Griffin argues that it is unrealistic to expect A-level students to have read great swaths of English literature, and says schools can only give them their bearings and an ability to read the compass if they want to make the journey later. "It's making it accessible and saying 'you have got the skills to go away and read anything - and you will cope with it, you will make sense of it, you will enjoy it.' You're giving them starting points and saying, 'this is something you won't have come across before; you won't have read Blake before but it's worth reading - read Blake and that might get you on to reading Wordsworth and Coleridge'."

Blake receives an almost universal thumbs-up from the students. Their other poet, Christina Rossetti (a PC choice by the exam board?), gets a more ambiguous response. Shakespeare goes down surprisingly well (at GCSE and A-level). There is criticism of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale ("too many layers", complains Tom, "as if it was written to win a prize"). Everyone seems to be enjoying the war writing module, which involves a choice from a wide range of poetry, memoirs and fictional reworkings of first world war themes in books such as Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong. The course offers no continuity, but the texts are interesting (except for modern drama, says Griffin) and the approach refreshing.

"We have a lot of discussion," says Debbie Morgan, who is teaching the lower-sixth class. "A lot of this is open to interpretation, particularly the poetry. I spot things sometimes and prompt a few ideas, or some of the students prompt things. It has to come from discussion. It was the same with the Atwood. We split into groups and everyone took a chapter away to analyse. They then all fed back to the class. It wasn't me standing there telling them what it all meant; I would help out in a few tricky areas but most of the knowledge comes from sharing ideas."

Luckily for them, this group has Tom (whose damning judgment on Atwood was quoted above). Tom may singlehandedly restore Andrew Motion's faith in the education system. He has not just survived the rat wheel but thrived. "My parents used to read to me before I went to bed and I just carried on," he explains. "I read a lot of Hornblower, then all the Greek mythology, then more complex versions of things like The Iliad, then some classics and then modern novels. I wanted to put things into place historically and get a rough idea of how literature developed."

This of course is what Motion would like, and what an A-level course - a series of snapshots - explicitly does not attempt. Tom, clearly an exceptional student, does it by choice - and started doing it very young. But he is the exception: some of his fellow students are just doing the set texts; others trying to find time to read around them; no one else appears to be seeking quite so broad a vision. Chantel, in the upper sixth, is applying her newly honed critical skills to her leisure reading (or what little there is in the run-up to exams) because "you start to look at it in a different way and can enjoy it more". Adam, in the lower sixth, says he does precisely the opposite: "I try not to use the techniques I learn here when I'm reading for pleasure. It makes it less fun if you try to analyse something while you're reading it." He makes a distinction between books to study and books to read; happily, most of the students don't.

There are three immediate dangers for Eng Lit. The first is an obvious one - ramming the canon down young throats. Apart from avid readers (and literary mountaineers) such as Tom, it's unlikely to work: Middlemarch is a magnificent book but everyone I've ever met who had to read it at school loathes it.

The other two dangers are subtler. I noticed that some of the modules, especially Christina Rossetti, were oriented towards the life and the context: in Rossetti's case, students were being asked to consider the oppressed role of women in Victorian society first; the work second. This is dangerously reductive, however convenient for setters of exams.

The third may be the biggest threat of all. Next year, Denefield will introduce a fashionable English language A-level, in which advertisements, films scripts and media reports are studied. Many of the students I met say they would have preferred to do a linguistics course rather than a literary course; what will become of Blake and Rossetti then? It is not specific "great" books that must be defended - they can be unearthed later in life - but the value of continuing to respond to fiction and poetry, of understanding other people's points of view. Ultimately, how we read matters more than what we read.

"I've read them all except Tristram Shandy, which I've dipped into. This is a great list, and Middlemarch is the novel of all time. But I think Motion's completely wrong about the school curriculum: this is a man who knows everything about literature and nothing about education. So many people can't read a recipe, let alone bloody Tristram Shandy. Children used to slip through the net; that's why you need targets and tests. And they are called must-read books, but it's interesting that there is no poetry, no science, no Shakespeare, no foreign literature. Waterland is a wonderful novel, but I wouldn't choose it above Proust."

Jacqueline Wilson,author

"I not only love Emma, but named my daughter after it. Middlemarch you never want to end, and Great Expectations I've read three times. Apart from those books, this wouldn't be my list. I would expect Madame Bovary, maybe Anna Karenina, and why not Jane Eyre? Ulysses I've read crib notes to, but failed to finish. Waterland I have huge problems with because my copy had a great eel on the front. I detest eels so much I couldn't read it."

Tracy Chevalier, author and graduate of the UEA MA in creative writing

"It's hard to be prescriptive; you would just say, more generally, if you want to be a writer, you have to read. His suggestion really is to read broadly: he hasn't said just read the classics or just read the 20th century. It's a shame there aren't more women. Not all the people in my class would have read these, but I think a lot would. Tristram Shandy's still on the list of books I know I should read."

Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector of schools, research professor at Buckingham university

"I disagree that tests have restricted reading. I was on the executive of the body responsible for the national curriculum and we fought all sorts of battles to ensure children studied great literature. If anything, Motion is confused: the teaching of literature isn't about creativity, it's about appreciation. Ulysses, Tristram Shandy and Midnight's Children aren't really suitable for people under 18. A fundamental goal should be to ensure all children have a taste of the classics. My list wouldn't just include 19th- and 20th-century literature: Chaucer, Donne, Milton and some romantic poetry should be on there."

"I have a slight problem with his perception of pupils as passive creatures who, unless they were forced on to all these things, would just wander round in darkness. I read the classics for myself. If you get to this age and haven't read, then it is not the school's fault, it's your fault. Must-read books? Certainly Dickens; Dickens all the time. But also Homer, and Beowulf, and Shakespeare. JG Ballard is worth 10 of Graham Swift and Salman Rushdie put together. And it's strange there are no women from the 20th century."